Maryland's Union Mill Makes a High-Performance Comeback

In the 1880s, Baltimore’s hulking mill complexes sprang up along the Jones Falls stream, forming the industrial center of a bustling city until the early 1900s. Union Mill turned out cotton duck (commonly referred to as canvas), its 86,000 ft2 stone structure housing one of the largest such operations in the world. Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the mills are being repurposed, and their massive scale and thick masonry walls present both opportunities and challenges for today’s rigorous energy performance standards.